HANDSOME NED
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Video
THE SECOND COMING OF THE KING OF QUEEN
HANDSOME NED HAS AN UPCOMING MOVIE, A U.S. CD RELEASE AND NEW YOUNG FANS – BUT HE WON’T BE TOURING.
Handsome Ned is the last one into a blood-red Dodge van already stuffed with band members, girlfriends and gear. His ever-present Stetson isn’t dislodged in the scramble out of the Cameron House, and neither is his grin as he and his rockabilly punks head uptown to play Larry’s Hideaway. It’ll be the second of at least three full gigs across a handful of Toronto blocks on a night that won’t end until lunchtime tomorrow.
As guitar-playing driver Tony Kenny grinds the rusting ride into gear, Ned gathers his terrible teeth in a spectacular smile and beams out the van’s tiny side window like a Beatle looking out of a BOAC jet as it taxis toward the terminal across the JFK tarmac.
For almost five years in the early 80s, Handsome Ned was the King of Queen West. The smooth-voiced scenester used his hillbilly hokiness to hide an ambitious energy that was supposed to take his amazing talent to the top. A subtle but effective self-promoter and the man all local musicians wanted to impress, Ned had a plan – only he wasn’t supposed to die before it all worked out.
Handsome Ned inhabits that lonely, windblown place visited by Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons and Kurt Cobain. He didn’t invent dying young and foolish, but he did help invent the Queen West arts and music scene out of a crumbling neighbourhood that was a thousand watts away from the chain-store-crammed promenade of today.
His heroin overdose 21 years ago tonight (January 10) did more to change forever the emerging artistry on that strip than any national-brand bivouac ever could.
Handsome Ned is the last one into a blood-red Dodge van already stuffed with band members, girlfriends and gear. His ever-present Stetson isn’t dislodged in the scramble out of the Cameron House, and neither is his grin as he and his rockabilly punks head uptown to play Larry’s Hideaway. It’ll be the second of at least three full gigs across a handful of Toronto blocks on a night that won’t end until lunchtime tomorrow.
As guitar-playing driver Tony Kenny grinds the rusting ride into gear, Ned gathers his terrible teeth in a spectacular smile and beams out the van’s tiny side window like a Beatle looking out of a BOAC jet as it taxis toward the terminal across the JFK tarmac.
For almost five years in the early 80s, Handsome Ned was the King of Queen West. The smooth-voiced scenester used his hillbilly hokiness to hide an ambitious energy that was supposed to take his amazing talent to the top. A subtle but effective self-promoter and the man all local musicians wanted to impress, Ned had a plan – only he wasn’t supposed to die before it all worked out.
Handsome Ned inhabits that lonely, windblown place visited by Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons and Kurt Cobain. He didn’t invent dying young and foolish, but he did help invent the Queen West arts and music scene out of a crumbling neighbourhood that was a thousand watts away from the chain-store-crammed promenade of today.
His heroin overdose 21 years ago tonight (January 10) did more to change forever the emerging artistry on that strip than any national-brand bivouac ever could.
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